


silently

by kornevable



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:47:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23267968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kornevable/pseuds/kornevable
Summary: There is the burning, harsh grip around his heart squeezing it dry while the oppressive torpor makes his body freeze in ways he’s never felt, on the battlefield or wherever else. It’s frustrating, it’s full of nonsense, and his hand twitches for his blade to cut down entire cities.Battling through his emotions is a luxury he’s forsaken ten years ago, so he walks, silently, numb.In the quiet of his mind, after Gronder Field. / post chapter 17.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	silently

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, here's my take on the aftermath of chapter 17, Felix-centric! This chapter kicked my ass strategically and emotionally, and I love the childhood friends quartet (well Dimitri isn't in this fic but) so here I am.
> 
> Enjoy!

Nobody approaches him while they trek back to the monastery. It’s a stupid decision to make so far into their campaign, wasting resources they could have saved had they not listened to the orders of a mindless beast. It’s a stupid decision, but Felix can’t deny that he feels the slightest bit relieved at the prospect of retaking Fhirdiad, as they should—as duty dictates them, though he will never admit it out loud. They have a more immediate objective that everyone agrees on, and rallying troops will be easier.

But for now, they are traveling in heavy silence and Felix refuses to utter a single word or to look anyone in the eye. He’s walking at the head of the party, among other soldiers who are doing their job guarding the carriages and what they contain. There is no need to try small talk and these soldiers aren’t interested in doing so anyway. It’s a quiet, eerie time.

He’s walking behind the carriage where they put his father’s body and he can’t stop oscillating between rage and grief. There is the burning, harsh grip around his heart squeezing it dry while the oppressive torpor makes his body freeze in ways he’s never felt, on the battlefield or wherever else. It’s frustrating, it’s full of nonsense, and his hand twitches for his blade to cut down entire cities.

Battling through his emotions is a luxury he’s forsaken ten years ago, so he walks, silently, numb.

* * *

The first to open their mouth and spout bullshit, surprisingly, is Ingrid.

“Felix, eat something,” she says like she’s approaching one of her restless horses, face marred with a frown. “There...are a lot less people in the mess hall, now.”

Less people still means there are people. For someone who is usually so composed and sharp with her words, Felix doesn’t find any comfort or reason to listen to them. He continues to stare at the pond, though night has fallen a while ago and there is nothing to see except dark waters. His eyes observe the flickering flame of the lamp on the pier, then back to the water. Not once does he look at Ingrid.

“Do you want me to bring you something?” she asks, and he hears the rustling of the clothes and the shift of her feet. “There is meat today. The professor said we deserved it after...after.”

Felix clenches his fists, more like a reflex than anything else, and exhales heavily.

“Stop wasting your time, Ingrid,” he growls, voice foreign but still his. “Go away.”

She breathes in sharply and shifts some more, like she’s unsure of her own movements and is afraid of being clumsy. Too late, Felix thinks, as he wonders what is the point of all this.

“It’s probably not what you want to hear, but...don’t do anything stupid, alright?”

“Just go away, Ingrid!”

And so she does, quietly, just as Felix lets out a wordless scream and grips his hair, unable to chase out Ingrid’s voice, hollow and pained like on that fateful day once upon a time, or the memory of Ingrid and him crying when they watched the body being deposited under the soil.

He rushes past pitiful gazes and sympathetic shakes of head to lock himself up in the training grounds.

* * *

His feet are sore from a week’s worth of traveling and suffering from bruises gained on the battlefield, and his arms are more lead than flesh when the doors are pushed open. The sound of his sword hitting again and again the wooden target has been ringing in his ears for the past hour, and he pretends it’s the only sound he hears.

“Did you ask Mercedes or Annette to look at you before coming here?”

Felix’s fingers curl even tighter around his sword, threatening to lose their grip every time he gives a much too vicious thrust. He focuses on the path of his blade and he imagines that the target heals itself whenever it gets injured, so that he can smash it down again in places he has already inflicted a gash before. His loud breathing is only the result of his relentless training—there is nothing justifying why else his body is so heavy and his mind so foggy.

He watches every dent he makes in the target instead of meeting Sylvain’s eyes, who is without a doubt staring at him.

“Sorry, stupid question, you don’t need help.”

His hands twitch and another flavor of fury blooms in his chest, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. Sylvain has always been like this; his foolish smile covers all the poisonous words that he embellishes with compliments and unnecessary wording, and when he drops all pretenses, he wants to be heard.

Except Felix doesn’t want to listen.

“I’m just going to sit there, then. In case you tire yourself and decide to sleep on the floor and decay.”

Felix turns to another dummy and keeps going, only seeing from the corner of the eye Sylvain casually sitting down on the step. He almost expects him to sprawl on the ground, elbows propped up, but Sylvain does nothing of the sort and watches, in silence. Felix ignores him—with a sword in hand and a definite target there is no need to pay attention to anything else, to anything that is not of significance. His ankles are aching and his wrist is burning, but if he stops, everything else will. Swinging his blade around is familiar; there is a purpose, something he can do and accomplish like he was born for it.

Sweat is trickling down his chin and into his eyes and his hair is sticking to his forehead, a rush of adrenaline fueling every single one of his moves like he’s fighting for his life and needs to take down the invincible enemy standing in front of him. Time has little importance when the blood pumping in his head drown nefarious thoughts and pointless musings.

However strong he wants to appear to be, however resilient he truly is, his arm finally lets him down and he drops unceremoniously his sword, just as his knees give out and he crumples on the ground, panting but hissing, hands curled into tight fists. It’s never enough—even at a losing point, even when his muscles are painfully pulling him in every direction and none at the same time, he feels he has to keep going for the clarity of his mind. He tries to push on his feet and his hands but he only pathetically falls down again, drained from energy that was long gone already.

Boots enter his field of view and he’s physically too tired to push Sylvain away.

“You knew this would happen, why are you so stubborn?” he asks without anger, though his tone of voice doesn’t appease Felix in the slightest.

“Shut up,” Felix snarls, still refusing to look at his face.

“I just want you to take some rest. Your arm won’t be wielding a sword any time soon if you keep being one-track minded for training.”

Speaking with Sylvain is odd, often infuriating and definitely unwanted at times. He always prods and forces people into corners they don’t like. Felix has known him long enough to recognize his tactics, but it also means Sylvain knows exactly what buttons to push. Stubbornness is a trait that the four of them share and it’s not pretty, sometimes.

“Leave me alone.” Felix grows agitated and even more frustrated, clenching his fists until he can’t feel them anymore. His knuckles scrape against the ground.

“Felix, I know exactly what you’re going to do. I didn’t do anything when Glenn died, so I’m not watching you destroy yourself even further.”

Sylvain doesn’t recoil or so much as flinch, even when Felix finally jerks his head up and pins him with his darkest glare.

“Fuck off Sylvain, can’t you obey once in your life?”

He perfectly knows that he can’t see clearly; he perfectly knows what he’s feeling. But Sylvain, just like Ingrid, thinks they know better and won’t let him handle the matter himself, as if they were more qualified to examine his own mental state.

“I’m not going to say anything else,” Sylvain sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Just go to sleep. You haven’t slept much when we were traveling back to the monastery. Ingrid and I are only asking that you take care of yourself.”

“Of course you both are in this ploy.”

Invoking his brother’s name is the one thing that makes Felix’s blood boil and his hand reach for his sword without thinking about the consequences. Sylvain is purposely doing this and the fury that’s consuming Felix gets fiercer and fiercer, uncontrollable like the fire that was ravaging Gronder Field.

“I said my piece,” Sylvain says distantly. “Unless I haul you into your bedroom, you’re going to stay here and your injuries will get worse.”

“I don’t need your fucking help.”

“Should I get Annette? She’s not going to judge you.”

She’s going to fuss over him and that’s probably worse, but Felix says nothing and pointedly looks at anything but Sylvain. And Mercedes is going to look at him with compassion or pity in her eyes, and at this point every option sounds awful so Felix exhales heavily, and drags a hand across his face. All the bones in his body have turned into mush and exhaustion suddenly drapes over his shoulders, like it waited for him to run out of escapes to manifest.

“I’m not going to get much sleep anyway,” he mutters.

When he glances at Sylvain, he sees a tired smile on his lips.

“I know.”

He resists only on principle when Sylvain helps him up, since he logically knows he won’t be able to on his own. He hates how predictable he can be, how easy it is to break the barriers he’s set around himself, but Ingrid and Sylvain naturally know how to smash them after seeing parts of him that nobody else did.

The walk to the dormitories is a long one, filled with the usual silence that settled in his head since Gronder Field—there is silence even when all he wants to do is scream and yell his rage.

The three of them are still sleeping in the same rooms as before, so he’s not surprised to see Ingrid waiting for them in front of his room, despite his earlier outburst. She looks upset, and she clearly has something to say, but her lips purse in a thin line as she ushers them inside.

“Sit on the bed.”

He does as he’s told grudgingly, and lets them clean and wrap his injuries as best as they can, Ingrid settling on the floor and Sylvain standing next to him. None of them has trained enough in faith spells and that’s something they should rectify; they can’t always rely on their magic-oriented friends, who can’t be healing everyone right and left. Ingrid at least has taken the time to learn the basics and she’s casting Heal after Heal, while Felix decided that sending people into seizures would be much more suited to his style. It’s ridiculous to think about the specifics of their abilities so far into the war, when they could have taken the time to polish their skills when they weren’t literally racing against time.

In the end, the injuries aren’t that serious and it’s mostly rest he needs, apparently, so he goes through the treatment in a daze and listens to Ingrid’s and Sylvain’s breathing. Everyone has calmed down in a few minutes, and the fact he’s clamming up undoubtedly plays a role in it, too. Nothing is going like he feels it should, nor does he feel like he’s himself at that moment, surrounded by his two most trusted friends while the third one (the one who lost the right and is trying to regain it) is fuck knows where doing whatever. He closes his eyes; in all honesty, he hasn’t been feeling like himself for the past week.

“He fucking died for the boar. Like a selfish bastard.”

The words leave his mouth bitter, coated in venom, but his voice is muffled. It’s the first time he said those words aloud—they have haunted him and kept spinning in his head without him actually acknowledging them. It doesn’t feel liberating. It’s crushing him with the weight of reality and the accompanying unfairness of it all strangles him with misery.

“All he was thinking about was keeping him safe, and doing his duty or whatever. I hated him so fucking much.”

They don’t ask him who he’s referring to, and deep down he doesn’t know who he really is accusing, but the truth remains that only grief is left with him.

“We’re sorry, Felix,” Ingrid whispers, placing her hand on his.

“I don’t—need to hear it,” Felix chokes up, bringing his other hand up to uselessly cover his face.

“Probably not, but we still are.” Sylvain squeezes his shoulder, gently.

He doesn’t want to think about it, lest all the anger and the sadness overwhelm him and render him unable to conceal all this mess of emotions. His shoulders shake and his breath quivers, and the noises of his sobs are ragged, dragging out every particle of pain that he desperately tried to quash down. Losing control in front of Ingrid and Sylvain happened, before, and this time like many others they simply stand beside him, wordlessly. He doesn’t need their pity and their hopes, because he knows exactly what is expected of him.

He will bury these feelings and these thoughts deep inside his heart, and carry on. Dwelling on the dead will only bring ghosts he has kept at bay for many years—what is the point of summoning them to his side when the living still has so much to lose?

He will be fine. His father left a legacy he’s not sure he wants to inherit, but that is something to ponder on later, after his tears dry and his hatred quells.

**Author's Note:**

> Felix would need to think a lot before saying anything to his friends, that line he said about Rodrigue most likely leaving him the task of protecting their king really stuck with me. Who needs closure anyway, certainly not some guy who spent half his life hating his dad and his friend!
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated :D
> 
> / [twitter](https://twitter.com/kornetable)


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